Leadership Tidbits from an HR Insider
Hint…it’s not me!
I recently read an article on LinkedIn written by Brad Porteus, titled Revelations from 4 Years in HR. My first thought was:
Really? 4 Years? What’s the BIG DEAL!
See what kinds of revelations you’ll have after 40 years, then tell me about it.
And then I read the article - and I immediately sent a comment to Brad humbly apologizing for my thoughts. This man hit the high and lows of HR in one succinct article after only 4 years.
After reading the final paragraphs of the article the thought hit me…It’s not just HR who face these challenges. It’s ALL leaders who are in any way worth their salt. The difference is they have a lot more stuff on their plates and don’t have the coveted “HR” title.
So to give you an idea of what Brad was talking about I lifted (sorry Brad) two bullet-points from his article for you to read here, but I hope you’ll take the time to link over to Brad Porteus’ article to read the whole thing. (It's really worth it.)
“HR is invisible. A CFO recently told me he sees HR like IT. When it works well, it looks effortless and no one notices. When it’s broken, all hell breaks loose. A bit like airport security, we silently solve problems and reduce drama that others never needed to know about in the first place.”
Great, brilliant leadership is like that. Invisible and looks effortless but there's really a lot of hard work that goes on behind the scenes that nobody ever needs or wants to know about.
“HR is improvisational. Seldom is there a playbook for the topics that come our way. Edge cases prevail, and judgement calls get made. We improvise all the time. I see mostly escalations, as the easier stuff gets handled by those who know what to do. But I am struck by the improvisation required on a constant basis. You gotta learn how to dance while the music is constantly changing.”
HR is improvisational but so is great, brilliant leadership. It brings to mind Ann Richard’s famous quote about Ginger Rogers, she said, “After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.”
Brilliant leaders must not only know the steps of the dance, but most of the time they have to make them up as they go along without being able to see where they are going wind up.
While it is often said that being a leader is a lonely, stressful, and pressure packed place to be it doesn’t have to be. For those great, brilliant leaderswho rise to challenge there are deep feelings of satisfaction when people, teams and plans come together.
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